LUMBERING. 269 



to chop the trees of the forest. And there is undoubtedly 

 some irresistible charm in forest life, which, when a man 

 has once tasted, leads him back to it winter after winter 

 and year after year. Wages are good in the woods, and 

 so is the living, and although the hours are long and 

 the work hard, the ambition of the Canadian in the 

 back settlements is to put in his winters in the lumber 

 woods. None but good men are employed, and lumbering 

 thus becomes a regular trade or handicraft, and is placed 

 out of the reach of the immigrant, who can no more com- 

 pete with the trained lumberman than he can with skilled 

 workmen in any other trade with which he is unacquainted. 

 But although immigrants cannot be recommended to go 

 into the woods, they benefit indirectly from the lumber- 

 ing; they can fill the places in the farmyards or elsewhere 

 vacated by the lumbermen. 



I do not know where a better exhibition of strength and 

 skill and manly vigour can be seen than in the woods of 

 Canada. The lumberers are the pick of a tall, strong, and 

 hardy race of people. Their physique is admirable. It 

 is a pleasure to watch two or four (as the case may be) of 

 these fine fellows felling a pine tree. Their wedge-shaped 

 axes at the end of 3-foot handles swung far back over 

 their heads descend in perfect regularity one after the 

 other, just on the spot to within one hair-breadth of 

 where the blow is aimed. Kapidly fly the chips, and the 

 great pine tree shivers to its very summit, and presently 

 with a thundering crash falls on the very spot it was 

 meant to fall. 



The forests of Canada are the more valuable, on account 

 of the scarcity of timber in the United States. In those 



